Do We Really Need New Domains?

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Do We Really Need New Domains?

People who support the creation of new top-level domains for the World Wide Web tend to have the same argument.

All the nice, short, easy-to-remember dot-com addresses, they say, have already been taken. A poor entrepreneur just starting out online will wind up either paying big bucks to a domain speculator or getting stuck with a Web address that's long, obscure and impossible to remember.

Hence it was with great excitement Thursday that domain-name registrars and other aficionados of the URL administration process learned of the decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to add seven new suffixes to the list of Web addresses.

"There has been an interest in it from the marketplace and from consumers who say the dot-com space has been overcrowded and unnecessarily U.S.-centric," said Richard Lindsay, chairman of the board of Afilias, a consortium of domain-name registrars that had submitted a proposal for new domains to ICANN.

One of its suggestions, "dot-info," made ICANN's list.

Lindsay's comments reflect a general consensus among domain-name registers that dot-com – while a perfectly nice TLD – has been pretty well used up. According to registrar NetNames, more than 60 percent of the 32.3 million domain names registered worldwide have a dot-com suffix.

"The adoption of new top level domains lets the world know that there are alternatives to dot-com," said Craig Frances, president and chief operating officer of dotTV. The company registers dot-tv domain names, geared for sites with video applications. It was also a supporter of "dot-pro," one of the domains on ICANN's list.

Registrars admit there are also financial motives underlying their support for additional domains.

"It'll probably double our business," said Joseph Kibur, CEO of NetNation Communications (NNCI), which runs the registry site DomainPeople. His company was one of 19 registrars that backed the Afilias proposal.

At rival Register.com, spokeswoman Shonna Keogan said that the company has been inundated with calls and e-mails for months from people asking when new top level domains will be available.

But while registrars cheer the arrival of new suffixes, some folks who followed the dot-com registration boom question the logic of adding new domains.

"It's going to be damn confusing," said Bill Seavey, a writer and part-time domain speculator who is skeptical of claims that there's a shortage of dot-com addresses.

Over the last year, Seavey said he has registered about a hundred dot-coms and attempted to sell them for upwards of $500. He had found no takers.

Seavey is uncertain whether there's a lack of interest in his particular list of URLs – which includes "eparadises.com" and "shopperpower.com" – or an overall drop in domain demand. Whatever the cause, he said he's not planning to try his luck buying addresses in any of the planned new domains.

At NetNation, Kibur said demand for new dot-com domains has remained fairly steady.

At the same time, however, plenty of dot-coms we thought were taken are now back on the market. In the last two weeks, for example, pets.com, garden.com, mothernature.com, beautyjungle.com and a list of others have all shut down and put their domain names and other assets up for sale.

To get those, interested registrants won't have to wait the several months it will take ICANN to get the registration system for its new list of domains in good working order.